Journalism

[Commentary] On June 29, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders held an on-camera press briefing. The White House hasn't done one since. That's more than 2 weeks on the calendar -- and 12 work days. That's bad. 12 days. Zero on-camera briefings. This is not an accident. What the White House is doing is working to kill off the daily press briefing -- a ritual that has long functioned as the best (and often only) way for reporters to get the White House on record and on video about various issues affecting the country and the world. And even in the increasingly common off-camera briefings -- which were a very occasional occurrence in past White Houses -- Sanders and White House press secretary Sean Spicer appear to be working hard to be, at best, unhelpful and, at worst, openly misleading.

Coy, cagy media folks often resort to vagueness when they don’t want to talk about money, e.g., “six figures,” “seven figures” and so on. However, the system breaks down with deals for distressed media properties, as “one figure” doesn’t really leave much room for the imagination. Still, that is the price range for the recent sale of Chicago Sun-Times by publisher Wrapports, LLC. It was acquired by an investment group led by Chicago alderman Edwin Eisendrath for the grand sum of $1. (The newsstand price for a single copy of the newspaper.) That's according to a report published by the newspaper, citing an unnamed source familiar with the deal.

The deal also includes the Chicago Reader and the weekly’s syndicated “Straight Dope” column. Both are being absorbed into Answers Media, a multimedia production company simultaneously acquired by Eisendrath. In fairness, that’s not the only financial commitment made by the buyers. As in a number of similar deals in recent years, the investment group, which includes several labor unions, agreed to assume an unspecified amount of debt. It also agreed to pony up $11.2 million in operating funds to demonstrate their intention to keep the newspaper a going concern. The symbolic price tag is reminiscent of a number of other deals over the last decade.

An executive at local broadcast TV giant Sinclair defended the company and lashed out against what he called "biased" news organizations that have "an agenda to destroy our reputation" in an internal memo. The memo, written by Sinclair's Vice President of News Scott Livingston and sent to Sinclair station news directors, said he wants to “dispel some of the myths” being reported about the organization. In the memo, Livingston lists out several storylines that have emerged around the Maryland-based television company and provides what he said are facts proving them false. They range from reports about their “must run” segments to morale at their Washington station WJLA. HBO late night host John Oliver also made Sinclair and its "must run" segments the focus of a 19 minute segment earlier in July.

President Donald Trump on July 16 slammed the media on Twitter before spending the afternoon at one of his golf courses and tuning in to Fox News in the evening. Here's what President Trump posted, in case you missed it: "HillaryClinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media?" "With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!" "The ABC/Washington Post Poll, even though almost 40% is not bad at this time, was just about the most inaccurate poll around election time!"

Complaints about polls and unnamed sources are standard fare from President Trump, but the president's team is plotting new, targeted attacks. In a report last week on the White House's response to news about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer was this nugget from The Post's Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker: “A handful of Republican operatives close to the White House are scrambling to Trump Jr.’s defense and have begun what could be an extensive campaign to try to discredit some of the journalists who have been reporting on the matter. Their plan, as one member of the team described it, is to research the reporters’ previous work, in some cases going back years, and to exploit any mistakes or perceived biases. They intend to demand corrections, trumpet errors on social media and feed them to conservative outlets, such as Fox News.”

[Commentary] The Donald Trump presidency, dominated by images of decline and threat, “American carnage” and bad, bad people, has presented any number of challenges to the US press, whose instinct, after all, is to go dark itself. But President Trump has taken that impulse and supercharged it, creating yet another conundrum for reporters tasked with making sense of where we are: Is it possible, in this age, to be too bleak? Is the unremitting negativity of the news itself part of Trump’s approach to destabilizing the news business? Has this negativity in fact helped to facilitate Trump’s rise to power? Is it possible, or even plausible, to modulate the negativity in some way? New outlets should be the breeding ground, not of the type of alarming stories that create a yearning for a strong political hand, but of the knowledge of human imperfection and a way through or around it that puts a modest heroism within reach of the everyday reader.

[Lee Siegel is a New York City writer and cultural critic]

Rep Andy Biggs (R-AZ) is slamming the media's coverage of President Donald Trump and Russia, saying news outlets have a "fixation" on the issue. Rep Biggs said the coverage is intended to “delegitimize the president.” "If you mention the word ‘Russia,' it's Pavlovian to CNN and The New York Times," Reps Biggs said. He added that he believes Trump and Republicans in Congress are making progress on areas such as immigration, regulation and boosting defense, but those stories are being overshadowed by the coverage about Russia. “We have to do a better job messaging,” he said.

Edwin Eisendrath, a former Chicago alderman, is leading an investment group buying the Chicago Sun-Times. He told the Sun-Times he wanted a " group of civic-minded" leaders to save the paper: “A great group has come together and made sure that a genuine voice with honest and good reporting that connects with working men and women thrives.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Poynter Institute, a journalism organization, reports that the paper sold for what amounts to $1 and the assumption of any costs part of a future shutdown. The deal comes after the Department of Justice's antitrust division announced it was investigating a possible acquisition by Tronc, formerly known as Tribune Publishing, which has newspaper holdings that include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. The deal would have put both of Chicago's major newspapers under the same owner.

Americans are divided over whether the news media's coverage of President Trump has been too tough or not tough enough, according to a new poll. A Gallup survey finds 35 percent of Americans said the media has been "too tough" on President Trump, compared to 34 percent who think the media has been "not tough enough." Twenty-eight percent think the media has been "about right" with its coverage of Trump. Republicans and Democrats differ in their opinions of the president. A majority of Republicans, 77 percent, said the media's coverage of Trump is too tough, compared to just 7 percent who said it is not tough enough. But among Democrats, only 8 percent think the media's coverage is too tough and 53 percent think it is not tough enough. Another 38 percent of Democrats think it is about right. In a January poll taken shortly after Trump's inauguration, 36 percent of all voters said the media's coverage was too tough on the president, compared to 28 percent who said it was not tough enough.

Asked by New York Times reporters about emails revealing that he had agreed to a meeting to hear damaging information about Hillary Clinton proffered by an intermediary for the Russian government, Donald Trump Jr revealed the emails to the public instead. The move was cheered by some of the president’s supporters. They called it a clever way to upend a narrative emerging in the news media that Donald Trump Jr. — whose public explanations of the meeting had evolved several times since The Times revealed it — had not been forthcoming.

Still, political veterans from both parties said that while the pre-emptive publication might register as a short-term win, it could have long-term implications for the Trumps’ ability to shape coverage. Reporters seek comment ahead of an article’s publication to ensure a piece is fair; if the subject leaks the story to a competitor — or, in this case, leaks the information himself — it can be tough to re-establish trust. “You get one mulligan to do it this way, and he just took it,” said Ari Fleischer, a press secretary to President George W. Bush. “He will not get that consideration from the press corps again,” Fleischer said. “The next time something comes up, reporters are going to jam him in, 10 seconds before they hit the ‘send’ button, because they won’t trust him not to do the same thing again.”

If Congress grants an exception to legacy news publishers to pressure Google and Facebook, it might lead to the kind of concessions publishers have won in Europe. In the US, pressure on Facebook and Google has been successful in helping publishers gain traction, but the culture of European publishing and the vigor of its regulatory environment is totally different from the free-market roots of the US news industry.

Whatever the outcome, a larger question remains about the right relationship between journalism and the most powerful companies in the world. This is a long-term issue, which is unlikely to be settled by one group or cartel gaining regulatory concessions but, rather, by a more profound change in the regulatory and commercial environment.